Is anyone familiar enough with aircraft to know what the report of the cabin heating up, some mechanical futzing temporarily fixing things, then things heating up again might mean on a technical level; and more generally what the power situation is during prolonged periods on the ground?
Are APUs intended to be capable of running for more or less as long as you want to fuel them; or are they more limited because there’s only supposed to be a relatively short period between being on AGPU power and having the main engines online? How much time would you be able to power climate control and electrical systems while sitting on the ground before you’ve used enough fuel that you no longer have enough to complete the trip with the required safety margin?
Obviously none of the above accounts for failing to break out the beverage cart or just suck it up and bring people back to the gate; but I’m curious about how easy or difficult maintaining cabin conditions on the ground would be expected to be. Is this something where they should have deplaned much earlier but probably couldn’t have kept the cabin cool for whatever mechanical reason prevented them from taking off? A much more damning “towing over a mobile AGPU or spinning up one of the engines sounds like it would cost money…” situation?
